3D Bioprinting Chemputer Could Democratise Complex Chemistry And Make Any Drug Cost Effective

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Chemist Lee Cronin is working on a 3D printer that, instead of objects, is able to print molecules. An exciting potential long-term application: printing your own medicine using chemical inks.

What would this mean? Well for a start it would potentially democratise complex chemistry, and allow drugs not only to be distributed anywhere in the world but created at the point of need. It could reverse the trend, Cronin suggests, for ineffective counterfeit drugs (often anti-malarials or anti-retrovirals) that have flooded some markets in the developing world, by offering a cheap medicine-making platform that could validate a drug made according to the pharmaceutical company’s “software”. Crucially, it would potentially enable a greater range of drugs to be produced. “There are loads of drugs out there that aren’t available,” Cronin says, “because the population that needs them is not big enough, or not rich enough. This model changes that economy of scale; it could makes any drug cost effective.”